preview

Nelson Mandela

Better Essays

The word Apartheid means apartness in the Dutch and Afrikaans languages (Clark, 3). Apartheid was used by the government as a way to to separate people by race, where they live, where they went to school, where they worked and where they died ( Clark, 3). From 1948 until Nelson Mandela was made president in 1994, the Nationalist Party was in power and they implemented several acts that kept this already established system in place. Two examples of these acts are the Group Areas Act, which segregated residential and business areas of cities and the Population Registration Act, which classified every South African by race (Durost, 125). In the mid-1940s, the protests became more common and more organizations were established. A leader was needed to take control of the movement to end Apartheid and that person was Nelson Mandela. He was born in 1918 in Mvezo, South Africa and as a child listening to the stories of the elders in his tribe, Mandela became motivated to make his own contribution to the freedom struggle (Mandela, 3). He was the president of the African National Congress, founder of African National Congress Youth League and many other organizations, such as the militant wing of the ANC (Engler, 8). Within these organizations, hundreds of people were involved in a non-violent defiance campaign to sabotage government buildings.Through nonviolent and violent protests, Nelson Mandela had the most influential role in ending the conflict in South Africa caused by

Get Access